


Dances With Love and Death

by Morgyn Leri (morgynleri)



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universes, Dubious Consent, GFY, Other, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-07-01 19:17:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15780405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgynleri/pseuds/Morgyn%20Leri
Summary: Five lifetimes that never were, dances between Stinger Apini and Taylinn Adonai. Flitting bee and smiling death.





	Dances With Love and Death

**Author's Note:**

> I make no promises about if there will or won't be more of any one of these AUs.

**The Beloved Lord of Death**

He's a young Legionnaire, assigned to guard the alcazar of an Entitled for a rotation. Handsome, tempermental, and a little too observant for his charge's taste. Willing enough to tryst when he's technically off-duty, and she stops pretending not to be the Lady she is by right.

She's on her seventh millennium of her second Recurrence, arrogant, intelligent, and ruthless. Amused by those who do not see as much as they think, if more than most. A confined murderer and manufacturer of death, who is comfortable with lying by ommission to her jailor and lover.

A rotation after he's on his next assignment, an ursine splice brings a tiny, barely-weaned child to him. Stinger names the child Kiza, and finally thinks to look up the Entitled he'd been guarding before.

No one reprimands him for what he had done - indeed, he doubts they even care, since the paperwork for Kiza had been all taken care of before she was brought to him. No one comments on his daughter over the years, and no one asks about her mother. If they assume she's dead, all the better. She has nothing to offer his daughter save noteriety and a short life.

* * *

**Heir To Her House**

They meet when he's in charge of security for a party full of Entitled, and she's hiding from her peers and their scorn. When the system is compromised, he's too busy deploying his men to protect those still in the ballroom to notice she's slipped away. It takes four hours to find her, and the system returns as he does so.

She's happier with her hands elbow-deep in one or another piece of technology, constantly improving what others have made, and designing her own. A friend to the Aegis, and the Legion, who seems never to care if a person is technically her peer or not. Who treats the Splices who work for her family as if they are family, even though it annoys her cousins and uncle.

When he wants a daughter, a child to raise of his own, she's the one he goes to when he cannot get the necessary permits or permissions on his own. That she decides the best means of doing so is to bully her way through the requirements to marry him seems odd, until she lays out her reasons. His daughter will have all the Gyre at her fingertips, if she so desires, all for one Entitled to never have to see any part of the process of making a child. Making an Heir.

He can't bear to ask her aid again when he loses everything defending Caine, not even when she offers him whatever he desires. Later, he wishes he had taken her up on that, if only so Kiza wouldn't have turned her down when they found the Bug. It would have left Titus without anything to bribe him with to betray his queen and his friend.

Of course nothing settles down after that, and when a familiar ursine splice comes bearing Taylinn's death certificate and her will, he longs for the simple days when all that could happen is an Entitled bribes him to betray others. Splices are not meant to be Heirs, and he cannot help but wonder why it's him who's supposed to take over, and not Kiza as had been negotiated.

Three years, two assassination attempts, one suicide, and one person back from the dead later, and he still doesn't know if Taylinn underestimated Kiza's strength, or wanted to protect her the only way she had left. But he cannot return the Title he does not want, or the estates that Taylinn was protecting as much as she was protecting Kiza. Only leave the bulk of the work to her in repayment for what she gave him.

* * *

**Bitter After the Sweet**

He's on leave, exploring the open park of a planet full of flowers. Relaxed and enjoying the company of the bees that dance irridescent around him with tales of the best flowers and good honey and strong hives.

She's on a forced sabbatical, bereft of her research and frustrated with the lack of what she wants to do. Far from her hostel, utterly exhausted when she all but trips over him in the tall grass of a meadow.

Conversations about genetics, social strata, and the general unfairness of how the Gyre works turn into long walks and laughing kisses and trysts that end when his leave is over.

Kiza is two when her mother sets her in his arms, and walks away. She writes, but he doesn't see her again until his wings have been taken, and he's not sure what to do next. Shared bitterness over the sentence is not the best recipe for a good reunion. Nor does her evasiveness over what she has been doing since she brought Kiza to him.

The time after that, he's pacing the hallway of his own home, while a doctor tries to keep her from bleeding out, one enemy too many catching up with her when she's too far from her supplies to have ready healing. She refuses to let him take her to an Earth hospital, to put anyone beyond them in danger if her enemies dare to come here.

There will be no more sabotaged factories or poisoned RegeneX or murdered Entitled, trying to drive custom to her own product. Stinger gives Jupiter the sheaves that are all the inheritance Taylinn has to offer, with formulae and plans for vat-grown regen serum, and hopes that Jupiter will manage it better.

* * *

**"I Will Not Be Denied"**

He's still in the custody of his Splicer when he meets her, and almost asks if she's looking to purchase Splices for her service. She's all laughter and bright smiles like flowers and honey, and it makes him wonder for a little while if maybe he might not fit best with the Legion.

She's looking for a different sort of Splice, and hides her secrets behind cheerful flirting with the prettiest of Marcellian's creations. He's young, and sweet, and attentive, and all the things she hasn't been in a long time. He almost makes her regret leaving without him.

When he meets her again, he's in the Legion, and she's asked for a security escort while she surveys her estates. Still the brightest light in the room, undimmed by time or faulty memory, and with a sweet smile when she recognizes him.

She thinks he's as handsome as before, and is glad her purchase from Marcellian is currently on the long assignment she picked the Splice for. No need for that poison to be used against someone who she will have to let go again anyway. For all that she regrets to do so.

A third meeting leaves him with a ring on a chain, because she does not trust her peers not to have a screaming fit about the one etched around his finger. Fear well founded, because they have it stripped from him when it is found, though it takes his defense of Caine for anyone even to look.

They do far worse to her, though the tale spun through the Gyre for exiling an Entitled beyond the border of the Commonwealth is that she's responsible for 214 deaths of Entitled or their family members. No one wants to acknowledge that she married him as if he were another Entitled, to share in her wealth, if nothing else.

Kiza adapts to life with him well enough, though it is perhaps because Taylinn always makes sure she can contact them, no matter how dangerous that might be to do.

Contact that nets her an official invitation to Earth from Jupiter, however heavily restricted her movements are while there, or how deeply obvious it is that no one wants her near Stinger.

Sweet smiles, kind words, and bright sunshine, and every bit the delight he remembers. He knows that it's not all she is, that those deaths were real and at her instigation, if not at her hand, but those shadows seem to fall away when she's near. How, he's never figured out.

She knows exactly what she wants out of this chance, so innocently offered by a young Reccurence who does not know as much as she should. Allows the family she'd taken with her into exile to give her all the tools she needs to get it. Once she is returned to her exile, all is over but waiting.

Her son is six when the Commonwealth first becomes aware of him. Bearing his own seal, the paperwork quietly filed by her agents on Orous to ensure legitimacy of the claim. Announced across the Gyre as Miere Adonai, Heir to Taylinn Adonai, First Primary of that House, and son of Captain Stinger Apini, Skyjacker of the Legion.

* * *

**Ursine**

He meets her when she brings new Splices for the Legion. Most aren't destined to be Skyjackers, with heavy bones and muscle, sharp claws, and single-minded. There is one she brings for the Skyjackers, though. Tall and broad as any of the others, but more curious and with faster reflexes.

She doesn't leave immediately, as some who bring recruits will, staying instead to observe her Splices at their training. Or rather, watching the potential Skyjacker at her training. Visibly pleased with every bit of progress the Splice makes.

Stinger thinks sometimes that she's drawn him into some dance to which he's uncertain of the steps as the ursine Splice powers through training and toward active service, and her Splicer still remains. Watching Stinger now as much as she does the Splices, a smile brightening her face when he catches her at it.

The dance ends after a tryst, with her leaving with no more warning than when she arrived. He knows nothing more of her until his world has been turned on its head once and twice and three times, a daughter, wings lost and regained, and a queen to serve and all but worship.

She comes to Earth, with an ursine Splice whose service she offers to Jupiter, and a request to move her laboratory to Earth. Offering her own service, as it is, and perhaps more than just that, though Stinger wonders if he will know the steps to this dance any better than last time.


End file.
